I know an orchard where four hundred fruit trees branch

And every spring send down an avalanche

Of snow white blossoms burying the ranch

Beneath six feet of blooms

I hurry there and help to dig them out

To find their bodies, back and forth we shout

And there they are, content and strewn about

Like birds in flowery tombs

I often wonder if they notice that

Ten tons of flowers fill their habitat

Because, as usual, they work and chat

Inside adjoining rooms

And when late summer, early fall becomes

An avalanche, this time of sugarplums

And apples, pears, upon the rooftop drums

And we need power brooms

To sweep away the hills, the peaks, the butte

The mountaintop of ever ripening fruit

To find the ranch hands, cheerful, resolute

Intact as rare perfumes.